


too long did my soul sit hungry

by InaccessibleRail



Series: under my cypresses [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Biblical References, Codependency, Dissociation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, POV Bucky Barnes, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 05:23:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5955229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InaccessibleRail/pseuds/InaccessibleRail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hard to get my arms to let go, but I manage to release him before he releases me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Steve goes on a mission, Bucky stays behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just start at part one bro c'mon  
> part one is short and good(ish) just do it
> 
>  
> 
> **see the end notes for warnings**

_i._

He’s on his way out.

A few hours ago we existed in our bubble, only the two of us. What normalcy has become. We’ve been picking our way through an imposing assortment of board games. He promised me solemnly: we’ll set the dumb ones on fire. He threw the trivia cards to the table and I flipped the board for good measure.

We cussed and giggled like little kids.

I put my hands in the pockets of my (his) hoodie. I pull them out. They hang awkwardly at my sides; they form fists. I splay my fingers—I hook my thumbs in the pockets, and it’s a compromise to forcibly settle by. I am. Antsy - ants are running under my skin - and I think there are words I have to say but like always, for the life of me, I can’t conjure up the right ones.

He’s not looking at me. He’s put on his shoes, he’s pulling on his jacket. Right arm, now left—in a minute he’ll be out the door, he’ll be gone. _Pop!_ goes the bubble. I won’t know for how long. Maybe he won’t come back at all. Maybe I’ll wait until all the food’s run out and I’ve starved to death.

I haven’t so much acknowledged-  
              the sort of hopes I’ve been harboring, the sort of dreams. Here they seem lined up in soapy iridescence, the breezy violence of the outside world taking shots at each one. BB gun zeroing in. No, less than that. Easier. It only takes the tip of a finger.

It’s very clear all of a sudden: watching him get ready to leave, I realize I’ve been lulled into some semblance of safety. Like everyone’s forgotten about us until now. Reality’s lost its gritty edge - lost its hold on me - but here it comes. Swinging back around to hit me.

He doesn’t look at me.

A few hours ago I touched his sleeping, shaking form and he shot up with a gasp like I’d drenched him in water. He clutched at my shirt, he clawed at my ribcage. He gasped and sobbed. Took him longer than usual to pull himself together: I was afraid to move. I sat stock-still as he mashed his face into my chest.

I’m sorry, he said gathering his composure, once the panic was nearly over. I was stroking his hair. I told him to shut up.

But he made me promise.

I keep still. But not too still. I want him to hug me.

He lifts his head and looks at me, finally. His mouth is slightly open, like the words won’t come.

I’m thinking: don’t leave without touching me, don’t leave without touching me. And in canon: don’t leave, _don’t leave_.

He steps toward me, finally.

He says, quiet, just for me—even as there’s no one to overhear: I’ll be back before you know it.

Breath on my ear, cheek against mine.

And those aren’t the words but it’s good enough, as far as promises go.

It’s hard to get my arms to let go, but I manage to release him before he releases me.

 

I have a memory of going away. Of putting the last piece of my uniform on. I did it slowly, as though to subvert the inevitability. As though, it didn’t simply mean, I’d have to get to the station on the double. Lumbering and graceless. My freshly pressed shirt already sweated through. And he waited, he watched me. I felt his fixed stare on me. I wavered beneath it. Then, with that final piece in place and with my gaze lifted; then, with his voice as clear and quietly stormy as a whirlpool of water, he told me—I don’t want to be apart from you.

It’s only temporary, I’d tell him back then, lousy as ever. I’d say it more often than I should’ve. I let my hand tell him in a letter. Because everything is, and so it was the best reassurance I had.

That everything passes.

I’m well-versed in making time pass me by, I’m good at waiting. I’ve done it a lot. I make a pattern for myself. I set up a rotating schedule: and in its circular path, I’ll come back around. Around and around

Activity, fuel replenishment, rest. Activity, fuel replenishment, rest. Activity, fuel replenishment, rest-

Inventory comes first. I put all the food on the table in neat rows and piles, I calculate the rations. This will get me by for a week, maybe—but it’ll drain me. I might have to go out before that if I want to maintain critical function.

The thought weighs me down; I sit down on the floor. I sit under the table and hold onto my knees. A few minutes go by but I don’t know how many exactly, before I reach a hand up and paw my way to a candy bar.

Replenishment: check.  
Minus one item of supply. ( _Christ_.)

The void laps at my feet, it shivers down my back. Tranquilizing. I’m eating, slowly, thinking about moss growing out of my eyes, my ears, my mouth. From all the pores in my body. It wants to cushion me, so that I might lie down. Not yet, I think. Don’t be pathetic, I think. This candy bar is dry, I think.

 

It’s light out: I get on with my wifely duties.

I choose the broom over the vacuum because I don't like the noise. I think he figured and that's the story of the broom. I get like the neighbor's dog, yapping away nervously whenever the roar of the machine comes on. Only I don't bark, I wrap my arms around my head and wait for it to be over, like a child. At least it got me this broom.

I move all the furniture out of the way, I take one room at a time. There are eleven food wrappers of various kinds under his bed, courtesy: me. There are sheets of paper or paper sheet-like things with sketches on them in various stages of almost started. Courtesy: not me.

It’s still light out and a large patch of the floor in the living room is sticky. It’s just as well. I’ll do this properly, for once.

I know to steer clear of the bleach and the ammonia: I’m intimately familiar. Makes me breathe funny just knowing they’re there. But I don’t tell him that so he doesn’t know, and they stay put in the cabinet. In any case, there’s the soft soap. a sticky, gelatinous concoction—a hybrid of Jell-O and molasses in consistency and color. I don’t mind that. No wonder it puts me in mind of dessert. But that’s mostly the smell; though I find the gloopy texture pleasing somehow, too.

Took me awhile to figure out. It's bitter almond. The smell.

I put a handful into a bucket, I fill the bucket with hot water.

I use the brush.

This sort of thing my mother did, and her mother before that. I know this, even if I can’t see it. But I can almost feel her small, chapped hands around mine. They get that way from all the scrubbing, from all the loving. I might’ve thought about that when I cleaned my rifle, way back when. Might’ve thought about how he insisted on helping her with the dishes in the tiny blue kitchen, whenever we had dinner there. Thought about how he folded my laundry.

 

The living room is the largest area. Second to last; I’ll finish with the vestibule. I’m halfway through and the thought comes into my head that I might turn the ceiling lights on. No reason doing things in the dark.

Somehow the yellow light makes the apartment even emptier. The windows are bricked up by the night-sky, light clings to all the flat surfaces, it won’t permeate the air. Nothing moves, not even the dust because I swept it all away.

I put my knees back on the floor. The sticky patch is resilient—I’m relentless and nothing happens. Nothing happens and nothing happens. There’s a noise at the back of my head, or by my head, circling me. A weak noise, like a fly. He might’ve hummed a song, once in a while. Only quietly. Only for me to overhear. Maybe in the kitchen, elbows deep in warm water. I wish I knew what it sounded like. What contentment sounds like, the noises made, under his breath—the real kind.

I wish I knew.

I listen to the bristles scratch against the wood. Streaks of bubbles appear, disappear. My hand comes in and out of view. White knuckles. Blue veins.

The noise buzzes and whines, inside and out. It sounds like a radio being tuned. Gloved fingers turning the dial.

And a voice says:

                              give me your coordinates.

Scratchy like the bristles against the floor. Faint at first, then louder: it addresses me by rank. _Give me your coordinates._ It breaks off into static, the heightening pitch of the whine. The promise of. Electricity.

I’ve stopped moving—my breath is caught. Halfway out

Suddelny

it booms in my head:

_WHAT IS YOUR POSITION?_

I look up at the loudspeakers in the bookcase and it stops—cut off by my glare. My heart is hammering like a woodpecker in my chest. My entire body has broken out in a sweat.

I tear my eyes away from the bookcase.

I finish up. I put the things in order. My legs feel wobbly as I walk with the bucket to the bathroom, the water in the bucket wobbles along with me. The porcelain glints malevolently; the water is grey and full of little maggots of dust as it goes down the drain. I put the things back. I don’t look at the bleach, I don’t look at the ammonia.

I pace the length of the room—entrance to window. The walls strain toward me, the darkness presses against the glass. I walk toward the door and turn. I walk to the window. I walk back. I can't break the circle. My breathing has gone funny, my chest is squeezed by the trouble.

I should've gone with him. I don't know. Where he is. I need to know where he is, I need to know right now - but the apartment is a sealed box - I can't get out. I should've gone with him. I should've, I should've, I should've...

I have to sit down. The air is too thin. The thoughts keep on coming without me thinking them, they turn my blood into water. My flesh is wriggling with worms: gives me chills.

I screw my eyes shut. My teeth clench against a cry.

There’s no air in this room.  
          There’s.        There’s no.

 

We’re running away on gangly legs. Away from someone - enemy forces - sprinting as fast as he'll go, whistling past bodies in motion, bodies going the other direction. They all go curiously slow, while we whoosh past in a furious rush. The two of us, we’re tiny, it’s easy to move around them; we weave between them without touching. They stay out of range, like specters—faceless and absent. But it's fine, we're not scared.

We're grinning like maniacs as we run. In our schoolboy wonder, shellfire crackling like it's the Fourth of July.

We take cover behind a low wall. He’s catching his breath but it's hard when he’s laughing—we keep setting each other off; off like echoes, who knows which is which. Who's the start and who's the rebound. We burn and burst and start again. We press our backs against the bricks: it must be riddled with bullets. We press our shoulders together, like it's only the two of us here, no commotion at all. No bother.

I watch his Adam’s apple. I see the slight suggestion of stubble. On his chin. When he tilts his head back. He looks so different—somehow all grown up. To me, anyway. But you could barely tell.

He’s seventeen years old today so that must mean I'm,

                                         that must make me

eighteen

I hear shouting, in-between the booms and the cracks. It’s all behind us. The ground shudders.

He’s looking at me with hooded eyes. His face is flushed. I know what’s about to happen as if I’m clairvoyant. I’m dizzy, pulled on by more than gravity, about to float away and sink at the same time.

But I can't tell who goes in first—I think it has to be him but then, I'm halfway there already, aren't I? He's still out of breath, can't manage more than pieces—a kiss interspersed with burning air. I remember everything about his mouth, the shapes, the textures, the heat. It's over in a matter of seconds, I know it is, but reality stretches. That press, pause, press, pause. It's endless in me.

I can’t hear him for all the clamor. I hear nothing. The ground won't stop shaking. It’s morning already, it’s the middle of the day.

I close my eyes. The image of him is bright under my eyelids, consumed in degrees by the sunlight.

I want more. I want to go back and lean in again.

The light has switched on. Someone’s standing in the doorway.

A girl with braided hair. I blink.

No, wait. It’s her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for  
> \+ anxiety/panic attacks  
> \+ dissociative thoughts/blackouts  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **see the end notes for warnings**

_ii._

I’m standing in the kitchen entrance, trying to deliberate from my feet up, how not to walk into a snare.

The redhead did not come in from the front door, she did not come in from the balcony. She slipped in through the window in his bedroom, the one I left open just the tiniest sliver, to let in some of the cold when I was cleaning. She swept in like the east wind, sulfur on her coattails.

And a little white box that she’s put on the table. It has twine tied around it like a gift, ribbon knot. It might be an explosive but I’m hoping it’s food.

She’s melting something in the microwave, something else she brought. The microwave dings and the lights go out inside it—she opens it and takes the container out, dumps its content into the pot on the stove. She opens the cabinets and finds two bowls on her second try. She rifles through the drawers. She looks in the fridge but there’s nothing much in there save a carton of old milk. Eight potatoes.

I wonder if this is the preamble or if the interrogation has already begun.

The first thing she did was hold her phone up in front of my face. It had a text message on screen. It said _SNAFU_. It wasn’t from him, but the winged one. The name was written at the top. I didn’t have a reaction on hand for that, for the information the acronym proffered - I don’t presently, either - so I let it hang in mid-air, in my head. I let myself freeze.

She puts the bowls on the table. She puts the silverware down at the place with a view of both windows and entrance, but takes a seat diagonally across. I sit down where she expects me to sit. She eats a spoonful from both bowls, then pushes the first one over to me. It’s burgundy red. Milk and wine. If this is an assassination attempt, it’s overly subtle.

I’ll risk it.

It tastes sweet and sour and I’m overcome with hunger. I have to stop myself from pouring it down my throat in one go. Instead I’ll measure out my bites—I keep my head up.

She meets my eye with something akin to a pleased smile, barely there to begin with and gone in a flash. She’s familiar the way a sibling of a friend is familiar. Recognizable. Likeable. The way she looks at me, the way she holds herself, the way she eats her food. It’s all very suspicious and I’m too wound up to ponder it, I just eat.

He said you were asleep, she tells me, talking about the last time she was here—but I don’t think you were, she says.

I don’t comment.

Do you sleep in his bed?

Sometimes.

She scrutinizes me: she wants to know what I am to him, what we are to each other.

Welcome to my world of wonder.

It’s distracting. I’m thinking - in the very back of my mind, under low-growing branches - I’m thinking about his seventeenth birthday. Was it really how it happened? Did we start it that day.

Did he come out of his apartment and into an empty room with me; did he let me touch him.

So that I could know him.

I’d give anything to know him again.

 

She’s making us tea.

She opens the little white box, unfolds the walls with careful practice. There’s pastry inside.

Do you like these? she asks and breaks one in half so the fruit filling becomes visible. She lets me choose which half I want, then takes a big bite of the one left.

The stamp on the cake is in Cyrillic letters. I can make an educated guess at the message. I can make an educated guess that she’s asking for something more, something else, without saying.

Tulsky, I mumble at no one in particular. Maybe she hears.

I savor the taste. I’m thinking about nothing, nothing at all. I’m frozen.

You don’t do much talking nowadays, do you, she observes. It might have been an accusation, if she didn’t sound at once much smaller. She looks up, looks at me from the corner of her eye, she asks: is this how you are with him too?

What can I say to that? I only shrug. Is this how I am? Is this who I was?

In some ways I must’ve been reticent. Like him. Some things, we didn’t say outright. It’s a feeling I have, hard to put into a maxim for anyone else to comprehend. And there are so many blank spaces that I wonder if I know even a fraction. Like the entire war, almost. I don’t recall a thing.

But I can walk into the apartment we shared, in our disreputable neighborhood. Inside those four walls, where basic morality went out the window.

Like telling the truth.

We lied by omission, and did other, more depraved things, thereto. (Coveting your neighbor, brother, king—like he was the end to hunger.)

And I know. There came problems with that arrangement, even as all I wanted was to be near him. There was nowhere to cool off, no contingency plan. So we tried not to go that far, so far as we had to yell and storm off. And that closed us off, and put tension where it hadn’t been common before.

We put so much effort into never mentioning. What it was that burned us.

I know what it’s like to keep myself under wraps.

And now—there’s tension now, and things we aren’t saying. I wish I could learn from past mistakes, but it’s hard when your brain’s been fried like so many breakfast eggs and you don’t have the entire picture to begin with. (So really, it’s on him. Isn’t it?)

She sips her tea. I downed mine without registering the taste, only the warmth in my stomach reminds me I had it. Or maybe that's what SP-117 feels like. I thank her for the cake, for the food. It feels important, even if I’m wary of her, (rightly so.) It’s necessary.

But I don’t tell her what I know.

 

Having done the dishes she goes into the living room - I don’t - follow - and gets the deck of cards. She takes her seat again, looks at me to ask if I want to play but I don't. She raises her eyebrows in a shrug and shuffles the cards, deals them into rows. I watch her flip them face up, arrange them into four piles according to suit, numerical order. It's easy to follow. I don't mind so much. Watching.

I weigh my options as I do. She doesn’t so much as glance at me, but I can feel her waiting.

He ask you to come here?

He didn’t have to, she says.

I wait awhile. Until she’s finished one pile. Her hair keeps falling in her face, she keeps putting it back in place behind her ear.

Why do you care so much about him? I ask her.

He’s my friend.

She meets my eye. I undo my hair, I hand her the elastic band and she takes it.

I care about you too, she says and turns back to her game. Ties her hair back.

Why?

She stares resolutely at the cards.

I just do.

 

Nights are so long. They take up most of the day; it makes it harder. But it’s winter, I should know.

We’ve had dinner in front of the television. She ordered in—suppose she doesn’t like potatoes.

We occupy one end each of the couch. I keep her in my peripheral vision and she’s (uneasily) at ease with it. She doesn’t try to supervise me, but maybe it’s because I haven’t let her out of my reach and so she doesn’t have to. She’s not talking; neither am I. If this is a game of who’ll break first we have an eternity to sit around and do nothing.

But she wants to take me somewhere, I know that much. Maybe that’s what we’re really counting down to.

I sink further down into the cushions. On the television someone is planning their funeral. I’m picking at a bit of dry skin on my thumb—it’s not easy when you don’t have all that many nails left.

(How does it come about?) I’m thinking about the unpleasant feel of his (old) woolen blanket. Was it blue or was it gray? Maybe it started out blue, and faded over time. Maybe mine was blue and his was something else. I think I’d drape mine over him, now and then, after he fell asleep. Draped myself over him too, probably, on better nights.

She’s getting up. She leaves the room and comes back with her bag.

Here, she says after groping around in the bag, and she hands me a blue tin. For your hand, she explains.

I look at her, feeling obtuse, then twist the lid open.

My hands are thinking about something else, they don’t let on what the muscles remember. I rub the cream in ineffectively, one-handed. She doesn’t say anything about it or even look perturbed, just lets me get on with it. Meanwhile I feel on the verge of tears—overly emotional that she would care about the state of my hand. Overly confused about why she’s here, what she’s doing. Why I’m reacting this way.

We return to feigning interest in the television, and the feelings fester. It’s a cooking show of some sort now. I’m not paying attention. The volume is on very low, practically inaudible, or maybe I’ve gone halfway away again. Next I look up and the screen is black.

I guess I’ll take the couch, she says. Which is to say she’s staying. We both are. For now. And she wants us to sleep: her on the couch and me in his room.

In a second I’m on her, narrow wrists pinned down beside her head. She is pliable, plays feeble, if I don't let go soon enough she's going to hurt me. I lean in further to hiss: _what are you doing here?_

Her voice is calm, but I can feel her pulse pick up. Yet there’s something guileless, inarguable, in her answer that deflates my anger.

I’m just keeping you company.

Her breath is on my neck and suddenly I’m hit with something, as hard as if she’d kneed me in the stomach. The moment travels from my fingertips, up my arms and into my head.

My face flashes hotly as I sit up and turn away from her searching eyes.

I keep very still. Very careful.

I’m doubly ashamed—the lashing out, and on top of that _this_. This influx of information, of memory. From bearing down on her? From holding her delicate wrists?

Her breath on my neck. Oh God.  
                                     (Oh no.)

I say, faintly: you take his bed. And I can’t bring myself to apologize more thoroughly than that, it’s all the grace that’s left in me. And it’s a morsel at that, because mostly I just want her to go away.

My brain is overheating from the rush of my blood, my thoughts. I’m thinking, in amazement: he lied to me! _He lied._ But then, quieter, I wonder—I come to his defense. Something about this rings uncomfortably familiar. Because is it really lying - not telling the entire truth - when the question was never entirely asked?

 

Someone’s knocking on the apartment door. Knocking with the toe of a boot. A voice I recognize calls my given name.

I unlock the door.

The redhead stands in the corridor with plastic grocery bags in each hand even though she’s inside on the couch writing text messages and whatnot on her phone. The black, furry head of a cat pokes out of her jacket. I look over my shoulder into the apartment as though I’ll actually see her still sitting in the living room; I move out of the way once disproved.

The cat’s leaping out of her jacket and gunning for a place to hide before she’s stepped both feet inside.

She calls the cat Bad Luck: it doesn't seem to understand to whom she's referring. But it rubs its face against her feet when she's in the kitchen. It tiptoes over to me and shimmies its head under my hand so I'll scratch it.

I’ll give her this—it’s convenient to have someone to model your routine after. It’s convenient to be provided with a failsafe activity: watching.

I watch her feed the cat, do the crossword, exercise. She does all kinds of drills, some familiar, some completely novel. She’s graceful like a fencer or a dancer, and I’d tell her something to that effect if I’d ever feel inclined to speak to her again. Seeing her in the heights of her self-discipline makes me think of my own body, my negligence.

When she’s in the bathroom I go to his dresser and look at his sweaters. I glance at the green hoodie left hanging on the easel. The hoodie glances back. The bed glances at me too. I could lock the door with a penknife and lie down under the covers but I can't be in here too long. Something bad will happen. I'll melt. So I try to pick something of his. To take with me. Besides, there’s nothing to hide from. Besides, nobody would be safer for it. I don’t know what I could be afraid of—that she’ll cut my hair in the night? Because the rest. The rest—I don’t think about the rest right now. I maintain critical function.

We get back into position once she’s dried her hair: her on the couch, me in the corner, on the floor. I can see her, I can see the windows, I can see into the hallway. Maybe the cat will come to sit with me, let me pet it. The soft fur against my real hand. Tiny cat feet, tiny cat nose. House cats smell weird. A bit musty, the way earth can be musty, but wholesome. Primeval. Like real people.

There’s a crash in another room: a thump, like something heavy has fallen to the floor. I jump up, at the ready.

It’s only Bad Luck, she soothes.

It’s gone trespassing in his bedroom. It comes hurrying out of there so as not to be associated with the crashing sound.

I remain standing until my legs can be bent. Then I sit back down on the floor, in the corner, where the walls hold me up. The cat acts casual at first, surveying the room; once I sit it sidles over to me for closer inspection.

I get that the cat's only on loan. It looks well-kept. Chubby. Remarkably sociable, as though it makes a living being pleasant in exchange for care. It probably wasn't lost and hypothermic at all, she probably stole it 'cause she's sick of my company.

Fine with me. (Got me this cat.)

Bad Luck perches on its front legs atop my knee.

How many birds have you cut down, because your paws told you to?  
Because your teeth are sharp?

The cat tilts it head at me, its ear twitches: maybe it hears. I pick it up and I hold it like a baby on its back. I rock it to and fro, just to see what it will do. It stares at me, obliging, then squirms away once enough's enough. I look up to check that the redhead didn't catch me—she’s looking over from her spot on the couch, smirking, so she most definitely did.

My gaze lowers. I suppress a shudder.

Wouldn’t it be nice, she says - sounding strangely grave - to let your guard down?

I shrug my shoulders at her because I don't really understand. To what she's referring.

Later, when we’ve brushed our teeth and brushed our hair, and the cat’s cleaned its face and gone away to some secret nest, she pauses in the doorway. I’m sitting with the green sweatshirt in my lap, I’m holding it close to me, too warm to wear it.

There are others out there who would want to know you. Others who could care about you. Support you.

Out there, I think.  
                                         Out where?

You don’t have to rely on one person alone.

I have a distant urge to tell her not to let them see her like this. Without her mask on.

I press the fabric to my mouth, I bury my nose in it. I don’t know if she’s trying to make me feel guilty. It’s the resulting effect, anyway, so what good will asking do. I’m too selfish to admit it aloud, to take responsibility. But I know it’s not fair on him. I know what I’m taking.

She goes to sleep but I stay up.

 

She leaves without saying.

There’s a note on the newly made bed. _He’ll be back soon,_ it says. Cyrillic letters.

I sit at the foot of his bed, mindful not to mess up the covers. My hair is wet. It drips onto the paper, smudges some of the writing. On the backside there’s a ten digit number. The morning sun has warmed up the floorboards, right here, I feel it in the soles of my feet. I fold the note up and hide it in a pocket.

There’s lots to think about but I can only think about one thing.

He joked about that. _You only think about one thing_. He shook his head at the clouds to commiserate. And hell, if that’s not the truth right now.

I tried very hard not to think about it while washing my hair. I don’t want the sensation to get worn out, I don’t want to question its validity. (But it does, and I always do.)

I feel elated, even though it’s not a happy memory like going swimming in the nighttime or finding a fruit tree standing in a wrecked village. But it’s been like an epiphany, and as such it’s absolutely incredible to me, that I ever could’ve forgotten the details. Of course it’s unsurprising that I forgot—I’ve forgotten everything, every incredible thing. Of course it is. Yet here I am, completely astonished.

I stay where I am. I’m going over it again. I try to feel it, but I can only imagine. Can’t stop thinking about it, I can’t, no matter how the facts seems to shudder from all my handling. I need to put it in order, so that’s why. I’ll do it again. This is it though, I’m sure—the pivotal event, the catalysis for the end: I was leaving in the morning.

He asked me if I’d taken care of everything—and those were my words, given back to me. It was all that I’d told him. He was leaning against the frame of the no-good interior window that separated the kitchen from his bedroom. It was dark. I had woken him by unlocking the door.

I was leaving in the morning. I’d left all my things to him, my last will and testament, and it wasn’t much. It was a little funny, how little it was.

I must’ve told him it was dealt with, left him to assume. I must’ve told him something. I know I told him goodnight, I know I leaned on my hand, against the window jamb. I know I leaned in to-

And I remember pushing, and being pulled. He was undressed by the time I covered his body with mine on top of his bed. So was I. We pressed so close it should’ve hurt. I guess it did, later.

For a long time, it hurt a lot.

I remember him putting slick in my hand; I remember me, trembling all over - all the way into my blood, the air in my lungs trembled - putting my fingers in him. And then not my fingers. I remember what it was like—to have the inside of his naked thighs against my naked hips.

And I was leaving in the morning.

I had to suppress his moans with my hand: paper-thin walls, paper-thin floors. I had to cover his mouth with mine to smother the sound when he came. He pushed his fingertips into my shoulder, into my scalp. I was done for. I was a goner; my brain melted and everything I ever was must’ve coalesced with him. For some few blinding minutes, I became him and he became me. He was going down too.

I pressed my face into his hair, I seared my cry into his head. And when the shroud of heady exaltation was pulled away, there was a small frown left on his face, like resentment.

We were covered in goosebumps.

And I remember saying I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_ \- kissing his neck, the side of his face - and he told me

shut up, _shut up._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for  
> \+ anxiety  
> \+ dissociative thoughts/blackouts  
> \+ a sexual encounter without verbal consent **(this is not a non-con/dub-con story, but the text does lend itself to misinterpretation)**  
>  \+ ~~florid inner monologue~~  
>  \+ ~~a stupid amount of old testament/hebrew bible references~~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **see the end notes for warnings**

_iii._

I wake up. I have a crick in my neck and my head hurts, but I feel content to keep lying here. Cool air sweeps across the back of my hand. I pretend to be asleep to have this moment for a few seconds more. Inside my arm is tingling from cut-off circulation, outside it does so from how he breathes on my skin.

I think he’s pretending not to know. The silence becomes a presence, it anticipates the breach.

I’m on the couch, on my stomach. I can see his shoulder, his hip, his thigh. My curled fingers are touching the floor, arm hanging over the edge; I move closer to it, so I can see his face.

Why are you so stupid? I ask him, frowning down at where his head rests, right on the sleek parquet. My voice is gravelly and dragging. My eyelids are heavy but I continue peering at him, in emphasis, though he doesn’t look up to see.

I wasn’t sleeping, he promises.

I’ve told him fifteen times already not to be near me when I’m out. Sometimes I can’t help falling asleep, mostly he can’t help being so stupid—never did have self-preservation skills worth a dime. And then he likes to be contrary, just for the hell of it.

A small, dark bruise mottles his temple, reaching his eyebrow.

I smile despite myself. I’m incredibly annoyed with him, so relieved to see him the intensity could make me weep. Could fall on top of him in greeting, press my nose to his skin and bite his shoulder. My belated hello.

I peel myself off the couch, he rises from the floor.

Hey, he says. He’s lifting his feet experimentally, he rubs them against the floorboards, noting how his socks don’t stick.

You fixed the floor—he beams at me, like I’ve solved a real conundrum.

I make a sound in agreement, like I’m trying to hide the fact that he’s a moron.

He shoves my shoulder with his when he walks past me. I take in the way he’s stubbornly not smiling, I feel my chest expand, and then-

we go on like before.

 

He tries to wait on me somewhat. Tactfully. Tries to be altogether sweet, but he’s not so good at it. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Do I need something? I ask without asking, if he’ll comb my hair, to help us both out. Let me, he says. Let me, and he rubs salve into my hand. (Amen, Amen, Selah, Hallelujah.)

He's making up for lost time, now that he’s come out of the wilderness. He’s come back mostly intact, only bruises and a minor injury to his leg, so I don’t have to dwell on it. So much.

He lets our hands brush together when we're in the kitchen with our coffee. He steps in close to pick the cat hair off my shirt. When I redo the dressing on his knee, he leans down, leans his head against mine. I'm kneeling in front of him, his face is in my hair when he tells me thanks. I respond appropriately. ( _Punk_.) But I'm too shy to be upright, to turn my face. I'm too careful to move at all.

I think he knows why my pulse races. He’s a shut up well, a sealed fountain; my longing is barely contained. He has to remember.

The cat doesn't seem to mind him so much which is generous, seeing as it's his apartment and all. It messes with his feet for a bit, lying a distance away and reaching with its claws out. He pulls his feet closer to his body. He's leaning a book of blank pages against his knees.

I'm on the floor where he was earlier, I'm hunched over a pointless puzzle with numbers in a grid. No code to break. He's drawing so I know he's watching me. It's good. The feeling from before - when I just woke up - it hangs around us still. I feel at ease, like we're on leave—even if the puzzle is irritating. The redhead showed it to me so go figure.

The cat does a jump off the backrest and uses me as a stepping stone before landing on the floor—one paw is caught in my hair and pulls on it on the way down. I whip my head around to glare at the cat but the cat doesn't give a damn. It's already strutted off. I turn back to the couch where he's laughing at my expense, at the look on my face, I'm sure. I rub my head and try to frown harder. He's laughing at me, he sounds happy, and suddenly I'm laughing too.

 

He chooses a game.

He lays the blue and white-checkered board out on the bed, we pick our game pieces. This is _An American Classic!_ and it’s immensely boring and it’s going in the fire. He wins, then I win. Then I win again. But he doesn’t suffer like I do. He’s thinking about something. He’s miles away.

I stretch my left leg out a bit, my foot rests on the bedspread by his (wounded) knee. He notices. He lays his hand on the arch of it, the most unassuming way he manages to touch me. (Only in the eyes of decorum.) I look unearthly white under his hand. He has a rosy tint to his skin, even though summer was a long way back. I look diseased next to him. Deceased. Pallid and in the throes of atrophy. He doesn’t seem to mind.

Let’s make it interesting, I say.

I ponder. Can’t play for money, because we never did. Can’t make him eat a bug because his mother forbade us. Can’t drag him to a dancehall, can’t trade our chores.

Loser gets an Indian burn, I say.

Dear me, he says, looking at me seriously; okay, he says.

He pays attention this time, but it’s a game of chance and he loses nonetheless. I want to swipe the board to the floor, it puts too much space between us, but he looks at me squarely. He brings his arm up for me to hurt. My right hand encircles his wrist. My left hand is reluctant. My skin is still rough, at least against his softness. The metal must be cold, and I think: why would you let me? But he only smiles at me, that little smile he does. You’d almost think he’s timid, but of course he’s not. It’s just the image of his self-control.

I’ve held onto his arm too long. I twist my hands in opposite directions, I take care to do it hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to leave a mark. He scrunches his face up in fake agony. I release my hold with my metal hand, drop it to my side. But not the other. He doesn’t pull back, so I stroke upward, I follow the veins with my thumb. My fingertips trace the way down again. I rest them in the clutch of his hand. There are very faint marks across his palm, like he’s sliced it with a knife—a covenant made over and over again. I can’t check my own hand for correspondency because I lost it in some snow. Well, I’ve given him my clothes before, even my belt. I would’ve given him my armor too, if it hadn’t been useless to him by then, so. At the very least I can pretend.

He disentangles so he can put away the game.

It usually makes me feel bitter and hollow, but this time I only feel like swearing: I’m adding this to my list. My pile of unfulfilled moments—keeping count of all the times he doesn’t kiss me.

So he’s said it wasn’t an option for us. And he doesn’t seem to think it is now, either. I want to say: it’s not like you  
           to see an obstacle and not—  
                                                                       barge right into it until it breaks.

I don’t say: you _liar_. Didn’t you think I’d remember? How could I ever forget.

Because I’d rather take the less confrontational route. Less gabby. I’d rather keep our hands touching.

I pick the moment up from my pile, I’m on the verge of something, and I’ve decided. I’m not giving up tonight. Not yet. I’m tired. Of biding my time. Of being careful.

I say: I remember the night before I went to Basic.

Pause. We hold our breaths.

This is as plain as I can tell him what I’m (always) thinking. The one thing. What I want. He can’t say he can’t, because he doesn’t want to hurt me with rejection. He can’t say it because it wouldn’t be true.

He says: we shouldn’t, but what he means is, he shouldn’t. And he really shouldn’t so many things and neither should I.

I touch his face and his eyes close for it.

All bets are off.

I recognize this ambivalence, I can act as though I only see one side of it, like I can’t see at all; and he’ll believe me, or at least he’ll play along. This is good because it means I can lay him back. He wraps his arms around me to catch himself in the fall. I put myself between his legs. Now his eyes widen with anticipation—and all the sound in the world becomes his labored breathing.

He’s tattering along the edges in two seconds flat.  
    And I am  
     I am too.

The bed is soft under my hands and knees, nothing like his old one, I’m sucked in towards him. His hands are caressing my back, his hold on me is tightening, as though I’m pulling away when in very pointed fact, I’m the one pushing. Forward and forward—I need more. His hands are touching me as though they’re not in his control anymore, stroking up and down, on the cusp of hauling me in, into him.

I press my face into the juncture of his shoulder and neck and I breathe in, long, long-drawn. I move and he shivers with it. My lips graze his jawline.

I say his name: diminutized, like when we were kids. Even though he’s not small at all, and we’re not doing kid stuff anymore. I can’t help it. I say it like that, half-pleading, half-reverent. It hovers over his open mouth.

I say his name. He says _the_ name. The name he calls me by—he’s saying it over and over, with every outward reaching breath, reaching for me, with his breath, with the name. He’s pulling me down.

He’s hard and so am I. I roll my hips against his and the sound he gives isn’t supposed to be pained, but I understand that type of ache. I feel it confirmed a hundred times over, reverberating between us—it’s the same.

His mouth makes shapes against mine like we did this only yesterday. The tip of his tongue licks my upper lip, makes contact with the tip of my tongue and the world becomes tremendous, tremulous. I am scorched by my own trilling blood, overtaken by the surf about crash.

And my head is crowded with the novelty. I know something. What is it.

My triumph feels so immense, my relief—but deeper than that, there’s something poisonous. It’s only an inkling: damp coming in through the ceiling, one drop on my neck. That it’s somehow dreadful to have him. Like this, (like I want him.) I don’t. Understand. I want my victory over uncertainty; I want his want. I need it back.

He holds me tightly.

This isn’t common to us.

Why? I ask; in an instant I’m overwhelmed by all of these conflicting facts. He loves me, and he loved me before. So

-why weren’t we- ?

And he stops. He lets up, becomes immediately sober.

He opens his eyes.

The dread writhes. It presses against the barriers.

I loved you, and you loved me. We should’ve been together, I say. Or someone does. Something in me uses my voice and I want to take it back. But even more so I want the answer.

My thoughts are spiralling, my brain is being squeezed by a mesh of roots. What have I done? I’m scared I’m giving everything away, the whole truth of how I’m not whole, how much I don’t know. I’m scared I’m giving all of this up just to understand. I’m scared his hands are about to renounce me.

He stares at me. I know I’ve ruined it.

I wait and I wait and I wait for him to tell me.

All sound becomes my labored breathing.

We fought, he tells me, and the moment breaks. He puts my hair behind my ears. He’s not hauling me in anymore.

You told me I deserved better, and that was the whole reason. I guess you thought you could protect me. I guess I was greedy and you were scared, he says.

I am stunned dumb.

I get off him. I get off his bed.

I disconnect before he gets the chance.

 

It’s only temporary  
         because isn’t everything?

Except now we know for certain: everything passes and can’t be restored. And temporary can be a long, long while to wait.

I’m in the bathroom with the faucet running: unaware this is where I’ve gone to until I find myself sitting in the half-full tub. He’s here too, beside me, on the floor. He startled me awake.

He turns the water off when it threatens to spill over. I don’t react. I don’t look at him.

I look at the waves smooth out. The water isn’t lukewarm yet but it’s getting there. I don’t know why I’m sitting here, all my (his) clothes soaked through. My face is wet.

I hear the cat mewl and scratch its nails on the other side of the door.

I feel stupid and so very small. I fucked up. I’m a fraud.

All this time, he must’ve known. He knew I’m not right. I feel stupid all over again for thinking it wasn’t completely obvious.

Why’d you let me hang around here? I demand, with my pathetic frailty evident through and through. You never said…

The words get stuck in my throat, they’re hard to breathe past.

It takes a while for him but I don’t look over. He sighs like he’s sick.

I just- he says, clears his throat. His voice fades into almost nothing by the end of the sentence.

           I just wanted to be near you.

My insides twist in some visceral understanding, some deep-seated regret. He sounds ashamed. I don’t look over.

He moves. I think he’s holding his knees.

If I were someone else, someone good, I would get up and I would hold him to comfort him. But I’m this. I stare down into the water, I hide behind a curtain of hair. It hurts me to see him hurt and I’m selfish and can’t do better. I’m constricted by self-preservation that he wouldn’t know anything about. I don’t look. I’m no good for him anyway, how would holding him help? He needs more than my pitiful attempts at caregiving, he shouldn’t have to handle someone. Someone who does this to him. Have I given him anything?

I only seem to

take and take and _take._

I’m a burden to myself, so why wouldn’t I be

to anyone else?

I have a thought to put my head under the surface, take a deep breath: but it’s fleeting, almost nostalgic. I think I must’ve forgotten in all the warfare, the value of letting something go.

I want to tell him but I don’t know how.

I don’t look over, but I imagine. He holds himself together, legs drawn up, bitten tongue. He doesn’t know I couldn’t leave him if I tried. Not really. There are places to go, far into myself or down into the ground, but I can’t if there’s a chance he’s still here. Waiting for me.

He’s always held on so tightly.

I don’t want us to be apart, I say and maybe my lips tug into some form of a smile, grasping fondly, despondently at the memory.

But I’m gonna go.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for  
> \+ anxiety  
> \+ dissociative thoughts/blackouts  
> \+ a sexual encounter without verbal consent **(this is not a non-con/dub-con story, but the text does lend itself to misinterpretation)**  
>  \+ brief suicidal ideation
> 
> this took me _so. long._ to write. YOWZA. and if you've read this entire series you deserve an award.
> 
> (there may be an epilogue to come...brace thyself)
> 
>  
> 
> _"Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking._  
>  _Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-skins than on their honours and dignities._  
>  _I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all dusty rooms._  
>  _But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps."_


End file.
